Under-fire Christchurch City Council is under Government scrutiny again, this time for its resource consents department.
Environment Minister Amy Adams has instructed her officials to carry out an independent "diagnostic assessment" of the council's resource management planning and resource consenting functions.
It comes just days after the council lost its building consents accreditation with International Accreditation New Zealand (IANZ) for failing to meet targets.
Chief executive Tony Marryatt has been stood down on indefinite leave over the building consents crisis and a Crown manager appointed.
Now, it's the resource consents which are under the spotlight.
The council today welcomed the move, saying the assessment was designed to see if they were sufficiently resourced and had "suitably robust" resource management processes in place.
"We welcome this independent assessment and look forward to receiving any recommendations," said acting chief executive Jane Parfitt.
It is a non-statutory assessment and ministry staff will meet council staff and other agencies and stakeholders over the next few days to gather information.
They will then prepare a report for the minister to be delivered in the last week of this month.
The council's resource consents team operates separately from the building consent team and does not fall under the jurisdiction of IANZ.
The volume of resource consent applications received by the council is significantly smaller than building consent applications.
Council officials today stressed that it has consistently processed the applications within statutory time-frames.